


Mockingbird

by fellowshipper



Series: grief in the sound, guilt in the fame [2]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Loki Is A Jerk, M/M, Made For Each Other, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Iron Man 3, Tony Stark Has Issues, quiet conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-01 03:00:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18791626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fellowshipper/pseuds/fellowshipper
Summary: When a half-dead god-thing shows up in need of help, especially if you're also occasionally booty calling said god-thing, you help out. That's just what you do.Or, Tony Stark wonders, not for the first time, how the hell this is actually his life.





	1. Jumpscare

**Author's Note:**

> Abandoned this series for two years and suddenly I've got more material than I have time to write. Eh, you know how it goes. 
> 
> This one takes place between "(Not) That Kind of Girl" and "One More Victim". It can stand alone, though, as long as you know Loki sometimes shows up as a man, sometimes as a woman, and always just to fuck around with Tony (in every sense of the phrase). 
> 
> And yes, "Rootless" is still in progress. That one's going to be a whopper, so it's moving along slower. This was *supposed* to be a short piece, but then I accidentally'd 14k words in like four days and...well. Here we are.

Tony was not the type to be startled easily. Well, _hadn’t_ been the type, anyway, before he realized that evil aliens were real and not just science fiction tropes, before he built a killer robot mech, before he spent weeks freezing in a cave and turning into a glorified zombie because he was too afraid to sleep. 

Before his life took a hard left turn into what-the-fucksville, he’d been nearly impossible to surprise. He could figure out nearly every magic trick he saw, which endlessly frustrated whoever was unlucky enough to invite him to a show anytime he was in Vegas for some godforsaken reason. Surprise parties never worked; he was too observant and noticed the slightest things out of place. Movies were impossible; suspenseful dramas and horror movies full of cheap jumpscares did nothing for him. They were easy to predict, and he’d steeled his nerves against them until they were unshakable. 

But now? 

Tony caught himself jumping at shadows, whirling around in wide-eyed terror at every noise, ready to fight. Just last week he’d wandered into the kitchen for a snack at 2 A.M. like any rational person on a Tuesday night, and he’d chucked a plate at a very surprised Bruce when he saw movement from the corner of his eye. Bruce, standing there bleary-eyed with a bottle of water, he toed sheepishly at the broken dish on the floor and then very quietly asked Tony if he was okay. Tony just hadn’t seen him, he explained, hands shaking as he tried to put together a sandwich.

He flinched if someone slammed a cabinet door or if an especially loud car alarm sounded nearby. He broke into a sweat every time the alarm in the tower or the beach house sounded, even if it was just because someone accidentally entered the wrong access code. His previously impeccable nerves had been pulled apart and frayed nearly to the point of total fracture, but he couldn’t – he couldn’t _say_ anything about that, not when the team looked to him as the _de facto_ leader when Steve wasn’t actively calling the shots. What sort of leader would he be if he admitted that he really just wanted to build a sensory deprivation tank in his lab and retreat to it for a few . . . years? 

That’s why he’d taken to the beach house of late. It was quieter, far from the buzz of New York and the constant din there, both on the city streets and from within the Tower itself. The Malibu house was better, sitting alone atop a private cliff overlooking the ocean, away from the chronic light pollution and where the only real noise Tony had to handle was the occasional overzealous seagull. 

This, _this_ was what he needed: to just lounge on a deckchair in the early glow of a sunset, one knee bent to form a prop for a tablet so that he could flick through screen after screen of schematics and prototype designs at his leisure. On the table next to him was a half-empty bottle of Corona, just one of many to have been pulled from the bucket tucked between the table and his chair. JARVIS, a pal as always, had helpfully suggested some light background music to be pumped through the outdoor system, and after initially trolling Tony with what could only be described as reggae jazz, he’d settled on something suitably calming and instrumental without making Tony feel like he’d happened across the lamest hipster coffeehouse this side of Portland. 

This was what he needed.

 Which, of course, was why he couldn’t _have_ it. 

Somewhere between leaning over the side of the chair to pull another beer from the bucket and leaning back up, a flash of light grabbed his attention. He shot back in his chair and, without thinking, flung the bottle in his hand in the light’s direction. It crashed against the railing, sending beer and broken pieces of glass everywhere, and the source of the light didn’t even flinch. Indeed, the very tired-looking Asgardian barely reacted at all beyond a slight tip of his head before he slumped against the sliding glass door and dropped down to the ground, a defeated mass of leather and metal that hit the ground hard enough to make Tony wince. 

“Jesus! What is _wrong_ with you?” he cried, clutching the arm of the deckchair to keep from revealing how hard he was shaking. 

Loki didn’t look up from his new broken rag doll pose he’d assumed across the deck. 

“Loki?” Tony called, warily placing the tablet aside and getting to his feet. He’d gotten used to Loki appearing as an unreasonably seductive woman, all long legs and bright, hooded eyes holding the promise of all manner of depravity in them. Loki showing up just as himself, though, in full armor, was never a good sign. 

Especially not when he showed up dripping blood everywhere and struggling to breathe. 

“Okay,” Tony started, kneeling in front of his sometimes-lover, sometimes-enemy, gently prodding at the chest plate to find the cause of today’s disaster. There were deep gouges in the breastplate, like something had tried to pry the armor away from Loki’s body already. The buckles holding it in place were slick with blood, and Tony’s brow knitted as he tried not to think of _whose_ blood it was. The gouges continued the length of the plate, down along the sides, where the material _had_ been pulled away to some extent, revealing the tunic underneath was soaked through with blood. 

“Who’d you piss off this time, bud?” He knew he wouldn’t get an answer; Loki barely even looked up, but when he did, his eyes were glassy, and his already pale skin was nearly translucent, shot through with dark veins standing out in sharp contrast. 

“Loki?” Tony tried again, pulse quickening. Loki parted his lips as if to speak, only to let blood spill from his mouth and dribble down his chin. “Oh. That’s . . . that’s not good. That’s bad, in fact. That’s—okay. What do you need me to do?” 

Moving slowly as though trapped in sludge, Loki reached up and tapped at his breastplate, which seemed to be as much effort as he could manage. His arm fell back to his side, palm turned up, and Tony frowned at the noticeably mangled fingers twisted in directions that, alien physiology or not, he was _pretty_ sure weren’t natural. 

“Right. Got it. Uh, this needs to . . .” He tugged at Loki’s overcoat with all its added weight (seriously, did he _need_ the equivalent of several cows’ worth of leather, or was that just another kink?). The mage groaned, a terrifying gurgling noise that made Tony’s stomach lurch, but leaned forward obediently away from the door. A noise like hissing steam came through his teeth as he lifted his arms, giving Tony the room he needed to pull the heavy coat up and away; he would just have to ignore the sickening way it clung in places where it, too, had soaked through with _someone’s_ blood, and given the pained noises Loki was making and how pale he was, Tony could guess whose. 

The armor was shot. Whoever or _whatever_ had gotten to Loki had done a number on him, and the extent of the damage was only becoming clearer as Tony stripped away piece after piece after damnably complicated piece of what was, he had to admit, beautiful Asgardian craftsmanship. He wanted to investigate why the metal was scorched and partially melted against Loki’s left shin or why the vambrace on his left arm jutted out of place as though something beneath it was pushing it out of position, but Loki had pointed at his chest, so Tony had to start there. 

“If you die on me and Thor kills _me_ because he thinks I let his annoying-ass little brother die at my house, I swear to God, I will hunt you down in the afterlife and beat you to death again with that stupid goat helmet,” Tony muttered, only just then realizing the helmet was nowhere in sight. Loki’s utter lack of retort, not even so much as a sneer, made him move quicker, ignoring for the moment the wet, shallow rattle of the Asgardian’s breathing as he fumbled with the seemingly endless straps and latches holding the breastplate. 

“Fuck’s sake. Does it come off in one piece? How does this even work?” 

Loki had no answer to give, so Tony took that as a good opportunity to dart into the house, squeezing around where Loki partially blocked the door so that he could run into the kitchen, eyes and hands frantic until he grabbed the first suitable knife he found. It was large and nasty looking, a gift from Natasha of all people upon learning of Tony’s simultaneous love of pineapple and hatred of trying to just get to the edible parts of the damn thing. It _had_ to be enough to cut through Asgardian leather, Tony reasoned. Hoped. 

He came to a skittering halt in front of Loki again; Loki had slumped farther to one side, and it wasn’t just the veins alone that were showing up bright blue against his cream-colored skin. There were . . . markings? Tony reached out to touch one, knowing better the entire time, only to have Loki twist his head around and fix him with a withering glare that might have been more effective if his eyes had been able to focus. 

“I’m asking about those later,” he warned, pushing Loki’s arms back out of the way as he leaned forward with the knife. “Try not to move. I don’t want to stab you here. You’ve got enough problems already.” 

Loki coughed, spitting blood up onto his lips again, and Tony set to work digging through the straps at the side holding the metal parts of the breastplate together. The padded leather armor underneath would still need to be dealt with, but getting the heavy bronze plating off would at least give Loki room to breathe. Again, he hoped, anyway. 

With the final strap severed, the back plate sagged, caught only by the weight of Loki’s body against the door. The front plate, however, remained unnervingly still, and when Tony tried to pull it away, Loki screamed, fingers curling sharply enough at his sides to score the wooden deck boards. 

Frowning, Tony ran his fingers – gently, so, so gently – along the visible edges of the plate, following along the smooth metal until his fingertips snagged and sliced open on a jagged place where the metal had broken and twisted inward. The line curved for several inches, almost exactly mirrored on the opposite side. Someone—or again, some _thing_ —seemed to have grasped Loki in an enormous hand and _squeezed_ , but _what_? Loki had taken an utter thrashing from the Hulk, and aside from some bruises and having the wind knocked out of him, he’d walked away, body and armor alike intact. 

“Jesus Christ,” Tony half-whispered, brow furrowing as he tugged experimentally at the plate. It wasn’t moving, as embedded as it was now in Loki’s chest wall. “I don’t think I can—” 

Loki snarled something that could have been just a guttural noise or a word in whatever his native tongue was that Tony could never begin to understand. Whatever it was, he batted Tony’s hand away, curled talon-like fingers, broken and bloodied as they were, around the edge of the plate, and _pulled._  

Tony, to his credit, did _not_ vomit. 

The plate came away, but so did a portion of the leather armor underneath and even chunks of Loki’s flesh, so much so that Tony could see glimpses of bone in the newly exposed holes.  
  
“Loki . . .”  
  
“Other side, Stark.” 

The last dregs of Loki’s energy apparently taken up by the show of strength and the simple act of forcing those words out, Tony nodded and fixed both hands around the remaining edge of the plate. He looked at Loki, who nodded once and then closed his eyes, and then he pulled as hard and quickly as he could to try to get everything in one go. Loki heaved a great, sobbing gasp as fresh blood began pouring from the wounds now that there was nothing holding pressure against them, but his breathing seemed just slightly less labored without the restrictive metal and leather constricting his chest.

Wouldn’t matter if he bled out in a couple minutes, but one step at a time, Tony figured. 

“Loki, there’s—there’s—you’re bleeding _everywhere_. What am I supposed to—” 

His words dried up in his mouth when he felt the familiar sensation of magic crawling over his skin. It was the same feeling he got when Thor called the lightning to him, the same static electric charge that made every hair on his body stand on end and made him taste metal and ozone on his tongue. Loki’s eyes went unnaturally green, far deeper and brighter than they usually were, and his mouth moved in a wordless chant. Green flames sparked from his fingertips, turning into tendrils snaking their way up his arms, and Tony watched in open fascination as they spread from his shoulders back down over his chest and from there to his sides.

But the wounds didn’t close, and Loki made a frustrated noise as the flames died away. 

“You need me to call someone.” It wasn’t a question. And Tony didn’t care how angry Loki would get if he had to call Thor for help; he wasn’t a doctor, and he damn sure wasn’t up on his weird alien medical care. He was out of his league here, and they both knew it. That much was obvious from the way Loki slanted his eyes over at him, desperate and angry all at once. 

“You need me to—to get someone here who actually has a clue what they’re doing. You need—” 

“You.” 

“What?” 

“I need _you_ , Stark.” 

Tony went still, eyes wide, as Loki reached up with a trembling hand, soaked in blood and twisted into shapes no bones were ever meant to go. Not knowing what else to do, Tony grabbed it, allowing Loki to place it where he wanted, even if that meant on his chest, directly over his heart. A bit sentimental, but so be it. 

“Loki, I don’t know how to—” He hesitated, swallowing hard when Loki fixed him in place with that penetrating stare, his hand flattening over Tony’s chest. “Please don’t die. I’m—look, I actually kinda like you, and even if you just show up and scare the hell out of me all the time and treat me like a very attractive pinata and/or an equally attractive sex doll, I still like you. I’m pathetic and predictable sometimes and you’re the only thing in my life right now that makes any kind of sense, exactly because you don’t make _any_ sense, and I need you to stay—” 

The jolt of energy straight through his heart cut off whatever other embarrassing drivel he might have poured forth. 

He’d been shocked by live wires many times over the years, first by not knowing better while tinkering, then by just getting careless in his excitement over a new bit of progress on a piece of machinery. Thor had hit him directly with lightning—again, both by intention and as collateral damage in battle. And then there had been Doom’s sadistic little human battery rig, the one where he’d first seen Loki in her female form, the one where she had freed him for reasons she had never explained or even alluded to again. 

He knew what this was, and he hated that he was helpless to stop it, frozen in place as Loki’s entire expression twisted into one of cruel, possibly insane determination. The energy from the reactor fed back through Loki’s arm, mingling with his own abilities until the air around them erupted in arcane fire, bathing the world around them in a sickening blue-green haze. Tony gasped, clawing ineffectually at Loki’s hand; one of those times he’d grabbed a live wire had been as a child, ever unable to resist temptation, and he hadn’t been able to let go then, either, despite his mother’s panicked screaming. He couldn’t pull away now, either; all he could do is gape in wide-eyed horror at Loki, shuddering as the energy was ripped from his chest, from his _heart_ , siphoned off like— 

Like Doom had done. 

After seconds, minutes, hours, lifetimes, he slumped forward, gasping for air and barely registering the firm body supporting his weight and keeping him from collapsing entirely. A cool, slick hand cradled the side of his neck, and then there was a voice in his head, soft and more a suggestion of words than anything else. 

_I’m very sorry, Tony. Rest now._

Tony got out exactly half an angry curse before the world went dark.


	2. The Courtship of Hairy Potter. Approximately.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You are mine, Tony Stark. Make no mistake about that. And I’ve ever been the jealous sort.” 
> 
> “Are you . . .” Tony trailed off. Swallowed. Tried again. “Are you asking me to go steady or something? Because there are a lot less creepy ways to do that. Also, we haven’t even been on a date yet.” 
> 
> And that's how Tony ended up on his first real date with a bloody and battered god-alien-space viking thing. At his house. While said space viking thing looked at him like he was about to flay the skin from his bones.
> 
> Incidentally, that's also how Tony discovered Loki's favorite pizza toppings.

Tony’s eyes fluttered open to the extreme close-up of Loki’s bare stomach. He blinked, waiting for his vision to clear, and in the meantime, he counted the dark hairs, few as they were, that led down Loki’s stomach before disappearing behind his pants. 

But why were they sideways? 

He had just enough time to start questioning his sanity when he realized there were fingers carding through his hair and that his head was pillowed on something soft and leathery. Casting his eyes down as far as he could manage without moving, since it felt like every nerve in his body had been beaten and then set on fire, he noticed the familiar outline of Loki’s thigh. 

“What the hell did you do to me?” was what he _meant_ to say, but what came out was a garbled mess of broken syllables that made the fingers in his hair still for a moment before picking right back up again. 

“Oh, good, you’re awake.” 

“Wraaaaaargh.” 

“Yes, yes, I know you’re quite cross with me. You’ll survive. And in case you’re wondering, so will I.” 

Tony forced himself onto his elbow, blinking wearily at Loki’s bare stomach. It . . . it was actually nice to look at, and for some reason he felt compelled to reach out and drag his fingertips across a patch of it. As they traveled, they drew his attention to the series of deep gouges higher up, no longer bleeding but far from healed. When he reached up to touch one of those as well, Loki drew in a breath, shaky and cautious, and Tony dropped his hand again. 

“They aren’t healed just yet. Getting there.” Loki hesitated, plucking gently at a tuft of Tony’s hair before continuing. “I needed more strength than what I could draw on my own.” His voice was low and calm, and it seemed to reverberate through Tony’s own chest, like he was leaning against an engine and felt its rumble travel through his bones to settle somewhere deep in his ribs. “I’m sorry that I didn’t have time to explain. Drowning in one’s own blood tends to create a sense of urgency.” 

“Did you learn that from Doom?” 

Loki flinched, his hand stilling again at Tony’s head. Tony, however, was in no mood to back down, not when he felt like his mind had been broken and that his heart might still explode. 

“Is that why you helped me out? You wanted the human battery all to yourself?” 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Stark. If that’s truly what I desired of you, I wouldn’t have waited until I was nearly too far gone to do it.” 

Tony huffed and forced himself into a respectable seated position, even though it made his head swim. He closed his eyes to try to stop the world from spinning, though they shot open immediately when he felt fingertips press against his temple. 

“What are you—” 

“Be calm. I’ve regained enough of my strength to numb you.” 

“What?” 

“Mental pain reliever. It should help your body heal from my . . . borrowing from it.” 

“Right. But--” Tony was inclined to argue until he felt the warmth slide through his veins, not entirely unlike the first sip of fresh coffee on a cold winter night. His words fled, abandoned to the simple pleasure of melting into Loki’s touch. “I take it back. That’s nice.” 

Loki smiled—a small but genuine one, the kind that always made Tony wonder what Loki would be like if life had been kinder to him, if fate hadn’t led him down such a twisted path and twisted his mind and soul in the process. Or maybe it was just his mind; the soul itself, no matter how Loki argued otherwise, always struck Tony as being decent at its core. Through the course of their interactions, Tony had learned that Loki sincerely enjoyed making people laugh—intentionally, not at his expense—and that he had a sharp, fiercely curious brain that was every bit as wired for engineering as Tony’s. 

But where Tony’s interests largely began and ended with machinery, Loki’s extended to people; he wanted to pull them apart and study them, find out what made them tick, learn as much as he could, sometimes for some nefarious purposes but more often than not simply as an academic exercise. Loki had followed him around the lab in New York once, asking questions about everything and absorbing every scrap of information Tony gave him. Tony, of course, had been worried initially about this information coming back to bite him, but the open wonder written into every feature of Loki’s face had betrayed such an honest curiosity and interest that Tony felt _compelled_ to answer all of Loki’s detailed questions. 

He was a quick learner. As soon as Tony told him about one facet of a new suit component, Loki immediately linked it to something else he’d learned about in the lab, drawing connections that Tony already knew, but which were impressive nonetheless for someone’s first encounter with an unfinished circuit board. He picked up component parts around the lab and likened them to similar pieces of technology familiar to him from Asgard—which was how Tony had learned, much to his amusement, that Loki had no idea what an espresso machine was. 

“You don’t have these on Asgard?” he’d asked, astounded and barely biting back laughter as Loki poked at the various buttons and handles. 

As it turned out, Loki didn’t like espresso by itself (“Dreadful,” he’d moaned immediately after spitting out the shot Tony had made him). Lattes, on the other hand, were a hit, particularly if they were doused with enough cinnamon to choke a sugar-loving horse. Turned out everyone’s favorite deranged trickster had a sweet tooth. 

It was during those excursions, those educational trips around the lab while Tony blathered on and on about his latest project to someone who actually _wanted_ to hear about it for once, when Loki parked himself in a chair to eat handfuls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch straight from the box while he watched Tony work, that Tony started to see glimpses of who Loki could have been and who he _was_ , before the madness had taken such a firm hold over his mind. 

And it was during those moments, when Tony caught Loki staring and Loki in turn offered only a smile that made him look far younger than the deep lines around his eyes and the sharp angles of his face suggested, that Tony knew he was in trouble. 

Just like right that moment on the deck. Loki had ripped the energy straight from his body without asking or even warning first. He’d gone until Tony had passed out, and now, with little more than some magical Advil and a sweet smile that was probably just as much a lie as the rest of him, Tony was ready to forgive and forget. 

Yeah. He was in trouble, all right. 

“Better?” 

Tony nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay. How long was I out?” 

“Not long. Five minutes, perhaps?” If Tony didn’t know better, he could swear Loki actually looked a little guilty—not a lot, not enough to actually issue another apology, but enough to keep Tony from punching him, at least. “You were breathing the entire time. I monitored you. You simply passed out.” 

“I didn’t ‘pass out.’ _You knocked me out_.” 

Loki’s mouth twisted into a partial frown, but just for a moment before splitting into his more usual smirk. “Well, yes. But regardless, you’re no worse for wear, and I’m still alive. A fair trade, I think.” 

Tony groaned and pressed his thumb and forefinger into the corners of his eyes. “I really don’t want to have to get into a discussion about why consent is important, but I will.” He turned his head to work out the kink that had already settled in from where he’d been resting his head in Loki’s lap, and in doing so noticed the top half of the mage’s leathers discarded and placed in a sloppy pile off to the side. When Tony turned back again, it was to press his fingers to Loki’s stomach, though he made certain to steer clear of the wounds themselves. 

“You’ll be okay?” 

“I will, yes. They’re healing as we speak. Though now that you’re awake, I could use your help with a couple other issues.” Tony froze, to which Loki hastily shook his head. “I don’t need your energy. Only an extra pair of steady hands.” 

“Not the first time I’ve heard that one,” Tony muttered with a shrug. “What do you need?” 

Loki held out his mangled right hand and . . . right. Tony had managed to forget about that. 

“Did you let someone back over it with a truck a few times? Christ Almighty.” 

It was Loki’s turn to shrug then. “It will heal. It’s healing already, in fact, but I’d rather set the bones properly now so that I don’t have to break and reset them later.” 

Tony winced in unabashed sympathy. “Yeah. Good plan. Okay. So you need me to . . .?” 

“Pull my finger, please.” 

Tony spluttered and then looked up to find Loki staring at him completely stone-faced. “Excuse me?” 

“Pull my finger. Start with this one.” He wiggled his index finger, even though doing so made him grimace. “Then continue with each one when I tell you to do so. I’d like them all to be straight, so—” 

“Are there no fart jokes on Asgard? Really? Because I feel like maybe that’s what your childhood was missing all along. Just constant dumb fart jokes between you and Thor.” 

Loki blinked, evidently still not understanding. “I don’t see what pulling my finger has to do with—” 

“Loki,” Tony tried again, pressing Loki’s hand very carefully to his forehead as if that might grant him some sort of strength to keep going. “Babe, do me a favor: please just keep whatever little bit of innocence you might still have. Like that. It’s beautiful. Don’t change that.” 

Loki’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t take kindly to being mocked, you know.” 

“Yeah, I know. Which is why I’m not mocking. Being totally serious here. See?” Tony forced his face into some measure of composure. “Just go back to . . . telling me which finger to pull,” he forced out around choked-back laughter, which in turn made Loki roll his eyes and pull his hand back. 

“Forget it. I’ll do it myself if you’re only going to—” 

“No, no, come on. I’m just messing with you. Come on. Let’s do this. I actually like your hands, so I don’t want your fingers to be all gnarly and crooked, either.” 

The skeptical look shot in his direction made Tony think the offer hadn’t been completely accepted, but neither had it been turned down. Rather, Loki just continued to eye him for several seconds until he seemed to decide he’d rather get on with fixing his hand and deal with Tony’s inane meltdown later. 

So Tony did as he was asked, helping to straighten out Loki’s fingers until the bones slid back into alignment. Loki, trooper that he was, never made more than a faint hissing noise of discomfort as everything got popped back into place. As soon as the last finger was repositioned, a subtle green glow settled over the back of his hand. Seconds later, Loki tentatively curled one finger and then another, on down through his entire hand, slowly flexing ir into a loose fist and back out again. The fingers stayed more or less where they were intended, and then he nodded, apparently pleased with his work. 

“Thank you. Now one more issue, if you don’t mind?” 

“Did you get a building dropped on you? Goddamn.” But Tony didn’t protest, and Loki nodded toward his arm. 

“I need help with that as well.” 

Tony glanced down and for the first time realized Loki’s vambraces were also among the pile of discarded clothing off to the side, because of _course_ they were. But once he saw _why_ they had been removed, besides simply making the upper half of the garb easier to take off, he immediately wished he hadn’t looked at all. 

The source of the lump under the vambrace he’d noticed earlier was in plain, terrifying sight now. The radius bone (one of the only things Tony remembered from high school biology) had broken completely and punched a hole through the arm. The skin around it was mottled with blood, and the area surrounding the break was swollen and nearly black with bruising. 

“Loki . . .” 

“I’ve had worse,” Loki shot back immediately as a way of cutting off whatever Tony planned to say, which would have been a surprise to him anyway. Tony had no idea what to say to any of that beyond variations of “ow” and “holy shit.”  

“Okay, but—” 

“I need you to put the bone back into place and hold it while I fuse the pieces back together,” Loki interrupted. 

Tony looked up, eyes going huge. “Won’t that hurt?” 

“Yes, but presumably less than would losing an entire arm to an infection.” 

Well . . . well, damn. He had a point there. Tony _hated_ when others had a point he didn’t come up with first, which was the only reason he agreed to the plan by slowly lowering his hands around either side of Loki’s arm, looking up at the mage to get a nod of encouragement before continuing.

“That’s it. Just push it in.” 

Tony snorted despite himself. “Not the first time I’ve heard _that_ one, either.” 

Loki fixed him with a pointed glare. “If you’re quite finished being a child, I’d like to set my arm now before it rots off.” 

“You’re no fun,” Tony grumbled, but he did as asked anyway. Once his hands were in place, he looked up at Loki again for guidance. “Just . . . push it in?” 

Loki grinned wryly, slow and seductive—and that really wasn’t fair, given he was still caked in blood and shouldn’t have been able to have that effect on Tony at all under the circumstances. “Tony. Is this your first time? With a man, I mean? I already know you’ve taken at least _one_ woman to bed.” 

“Or someone just pretending to be a woman,” Tony murmured, rolling his eyes. Loki nudged him with the side of his leg. 

“No pretending, Stark. That was completely real. And I thought from the noises you made that you appreciated the effort.” 

Tony’s fingers twitched on Loki’s arm at the memories of a wild-eyed goddess in black and green sauntering into his lab and all but demanding to be worshiped. And while Tony had never been religious, he also hadn’t been inclined to say _no_ then, either. Or now, as it turned out. 

“Do you want me to help with this, or should I just go find a saw? I’ve got one in the lab, probably. Maybe the garage.” 

Finally seeming to sober, Loki straightened his back against the glass door. “Go on. Be quick about it.” 

“Just—no innuendo, but just push it in? That’s it?” 

“And hold it in place. Yes, that’s it. I’ll need a few moments for my _sei_ _ð_ _r_ to form a seal between the bones.” 

Against every ounce of good judgment he had—which maybe wasn’t much, but which _had_ to be greater than zero—Tony looked up at Loki, got a grim nod of approval, and pushed the bone back into alignment. It fell into place with surprising ease, though _keeping_ it there was another matter entirely, given how Loki’s entire body jerked with the sudden jolt of pain. 

“Shit. Sorry. Do you need me to—”

“Just hold it,” Loki ordered through clenched teeth, eyes screwed shut as he held his now mended hand over the wound. Tony watched with unabashed wonder as green energy swirled in the gap between Loki’s hand and his arm before sinking in, presumably working its—heh— _magic_ out of sight. 

“Is there anything you can’t do with that stuff, or is it just limited by your imagination?” 

“I can’t make you shut up, so there do appear to be limits,” Loki shot back, never even bothering to open his eyes. Tony cast him a sidelong glare, even though the effect was ruined by the smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. 

“I’m sorry, do you _want_ me to break your arm again? Because I’ll do it.” 

“No, you won’t, and you couldn’t even if you tried. Not without your armor. And as it’s currently nowhere in sight—” 

“As far as you know.” 

“—I don’t feel particularly threatened.” 

Tony squeezed, just slightly, and offered his most innocent grin in response to Loki’s eyes flying open in panic. 

“Yeah. That’s what I thought. Keep talking, Snape.” 

“Who?” 

“You . . . you’ve never seen or read Harry Potter?” 

“ _Who?_ ” 

“Oh, sweetheart,” Tony cooed, stroking his thumb very gently against Loki’s arm, a gesture that in no way eliminated the condescension all but radiating from every pore. “You’re missing out. It’s about a wizard. I think you’d like it.” 

“Is Potter the wizard?” 

“Got it in one.” 

“Is he hairy? Is that the joke?” 

Tony snorted and bit down hard on his tongue to stifle his laughter. Laughter meant shaking, and shaking meant either jostling Loki’s arm or letting go of it entirely. When he dared open his mouth again, it was only to barely squeak out, “My God. You are precious sometimes.” 

Loki, evidently just realizing he was being mocked and already over the whole affair, rolled his eyes and pulled his arm back. “I’ll take my chances on it healing without your input, thank you.” 

However tempted Tony was to just shrug and let him pout like the petulant child he so often acted like, he couldn’t help but notice the way Loki had winced when he’d pulled his arm in toward his chest or the way it hung at an odd angle. 

“All right, all right. Don’t get your fancy Asgardian panties in a twist. I’m gonna fix you up.” He got to his feet, took a second to make sure he wasn’t going to fall over from residual dizziness from Loki’s unwelcome trick with the arc reactor, and then walked back into the house. It probably said nothing complimentary about him or his life that he had to keep a veritable triage ward’s worth of supplies in the kitchen pantry, but it wasn’t like he was actually going to keep _food_ in there. That would require cooking. Might as well put useful things in it, like bandages, sterilizing alcohol, gauze strips, splints . . . a pool noodle? Huh. Tony tossed that aside and decided to wonder how it got there later. More bandages in every conceivable size, painkillers by the cart, medical tape and—ah, there it was. 

He tossed everything he thought he might need into an empty box on the floor (he thought it might have contained something vaguely edible at one point and had since been left to spend eternity on his pantry floor) and then walked back out onto the deck to park himself in front of Loki again. 

“Here,” he offered, unfolding the arm sling he’d found stashed away. Loki eyed it and then him, unspoken questions lingering brightly in his eyes, and Tony shrugged. “You get into fights as often as I do, flying mech suit or not, you’re gonna take a beating. This was . . .” 

He turned the sling over, fingertips tracing the back side. The fabric was dusty still with sand particles that had embedded themselves into the fabric. There was still dried blood on the inside of the sling from where the doctor had been concerned about more pressing injuries and he’d bled through the first set of dressings while waiting on getting his arm stabilized. Military doctors were known for their efficiency, not necessarily their thoroughness, Rhodey had pointed out, as if Tony had been aware enough of his surroundings or anything Rhodey said to care. 

Just looking at it, he could _feel_ his arm bending in a way it was never designed to move when he came crashing down into the sand dune, the crude metal sleeve breaking in places and leaving gaps through which the abrasive sand could score deep ruts into his skin upon impact, even while other sections of the arm broke and jabbed _into_ the arm instead. He still had a series of scars on his arm, in fact, from where the _efficient_ base camp doctor hadn’t been too concerned with making his work pretty so much as just getting Tony to stop bleeding all over him. 

Loki prodded him with his foot, and Tony shook his head. “I hurt my arm once too a while back. Kept the sling, since I figured it’d come in handy again sometime.” 

Quizzical green eyes bore into him, dissecting him, peeling him apart like he was another piece of machinery in his lab for Loki to try to understand. Tony ducked his head as he leaned in, purposefully dodging Loki’s gaze. 

“Here. This’ll at least keep it from moving around too much while you’re healing.” 

Temporarily seeming to move on from the questions burning in his mind, Loki glanced down at the newly acquired sling, tested the weight of his arm in it, and then nodded. 

“This will do. Thank you.” 

“Yeah, no problem,” Tony muttered, still unable to shake the feeling Loki was peering directly into his brain, scooping out whatever answers he sought. Hell, he might have even been able to do that for all Tony knew; he didn’t have a clue what Loki could _actually_ do, and the few times he’d tried to ask Thor anything of that nature, he’d been met with either blank silence or a shrug because apparently, despite spending a millennium with the guy, Loki was as much a mystery to his own brother as he was to anyone else. 

“Brought some stuff to dress the chest injuries too, while I’m at it. Those look pretty nasty still.” 

“They’re healing,” Loki protested, lips pursing slightly as he tilted his head to observe the still-open wounds on his chest and the upper part of his abdomen. 

“And while they’re doing that, they’re still getting exposed to all kinds of nasty shit. Plus, they just _look_ painful and they’re freaking me out, so I’d like to cover them up.” 

Tony caught the way Loki’s eyebrow raised and the sly grin that parted his lips. “I would not have taken you for the squeamish sort.” 

“I’m not. I mean, not really,” Tony amended, winding the gauze around Loki’s torso with the ease and speed of someone who had already done exactly that too many times already. “I just don’t like looking at gaping wounds. It’s gross.” 

“Which is the definition of squeamish, is it not?” 

Tony shot the mage an exasperated look, getting only an even broader grin in return. 

“Okay. I’m going to walk over there—” He pointed back to his abandoned deckchair “—and pretend you aren’t sitting here arguing semantics with me while still sitting in a puddle of your own blood.” 

“But—” 

“I’ll be right back. Keep your hair on.” And, just because he could, he finally gave into the urge to touch the delicate hair low on Loki’s stomach, earning a sharp inhale for his troubles. “Especially that bit right there. That’s nice. I like that.” 

Tony walked over to the chair, grabbed first a bottle and then the entire bucket of beer, and then returned to where Loki sat, this time dropping down at his side. He pressed himself against the sliding glass doors—and against Loki’s side, but who was paying attention?—so that they could both enjoy the view of the sun dropping below the horizon, casting the ocean in shades of amber and pink while gulls flew by in a last-second attempt to find dinner before packing it in for the night. 

“Here,” Tony offered, twisting the cap off one of the beers and handing it to Loki. “Cheers.” 

Loki’s eyes narrowed slightly. “Tony.” 

“What?” 

“I can’t move one arm and the other hand is fixed in place. How do you suggest I hold this?” 

Tony considered for all of half a second before shrugging. “Don’t know. You’re the wizard here. You figure it out.” And to Tony’s non-surprise and yet utter amazement, he looked over in time to see the bottle begin to float in mid-air, supported on a barely visible stream of wavering energy. “Well, shit. So you’re telekinetic, too. I really would like to know if there’s a limit.” 

“I keep trying to muzzle you to no avail.” 

“Mmm. You know, there are these things called ball gags I should really introduce you to sometime. You’d love ‘em. Ooh, or ring gags. They’re like, well, rings, and you fit them in so that your mouth’s held open and . . . and a guy can . . .” 

Tony lost his train of thought the moment he looked up to see Loki making a face as if he’d just been given a glass of piss instead of a perfectly serviceable drink. 

“What? You don’t like beer?” he asked with a rapidly widening smile that didn’t fade in the slightest when Loki fixed him with a look that said nothing so much as ‘please help me.’ 

“This isn’t beer,” he forced out, quiet and weak, and Tony snickered while reaching over to pat his knee. 

“I take it you’re not a pilsner kind of guy? Okay. What do you want?” 

“Something that isn’t—oh, this is terrible—that isn’t this.” 

Something popped as Tony got to his feet, making him grimace and brace himself against Loki’s shoulder, which he played off as just a friendly pat. “God. You are impossible to please sometimes. But fine. Let me go find something better suited to your delicate sensibilities, Your Highness.” 

Before Loki could splutter out an answer (or telekinetically fling him half a mile out into the ocean), Tony walked into the kitchen, rummaged around until he found a bottle of Guinness he had no memory of ever buying, and then returned to his previous spot, newly opened beer in hand. 

Loki eyed it with the same trepidation as if Tony had just extended a snake toward him, only taking it once Tony pushed it against his chest. The bottle began to float just like the other, which Tony noticed then had been set far away to the side. Right before the rim of the bottle made contact with Loki’s mouth, however, the mage glanced over at Tony, eyes narrowed, and Tony shrugged. 

“Stop being such a baby. Go on. I bet you’ll like this one.” 

Loki finally took a small sip, much smaller than the last, his jaw moving a bit from side to side as he let the liquid roll around on his tongue. Then, after what seemed to Tony to be a small eternity, he nodded and took a more earnest pull from the bottle.

“Much more agreeable. Thank you.” 

“Yeah, no problem. I know you’re probably not really a beer person—” 

“I’m not, no.” 

“—but I wanted to be a good host.” Tony paused to look over the myriad injuries in varying stages of recovery. “And to be honest, you kinda look like hell right now and like you could really use a drink or six. You wanna talk about—” 

“No.” 

“O . . . kay. Well, do you at least want to tell me _who_ you pissed off so that I’ll know which suit to get ready for their inevitable angry arrival for round two?” 

Loki shook his head, though it seemed more from exhaustion than any true disagreement. Long pieces of black hair fell from his shoulder to obscure his face, and Tony, without thinking, reached out to push them back. Loki shrank away from the touch before immediately seeming to catch himself and offering the tiniest, almost apologetic near-smile. 

“There was a disagreement.” 

“Yeah, no shit.”

“But it was handled.” 

“Gonna call your bluff on that one.” 

“I didn’t say it was handled to my satisfaction.” Loki’s breath came out in a quiet sigh as he relaxed against the door—and, Tony noticed, a little to the side, leaning more heavily against Tony himself. “Victor won’t be looking for me anytime soon. He made it abundantly clear that our partnership is . . . suspended, for the time being.” 

Tony’s hand, which had somehow (he had no idea, really) made it to rest on Loki’s thigh, stopped its movement where it had been rubbing slow circles. “I don’t suppose you hang out with more than one bad guy named Victor.” 

“No.” 

“So . . . you’re still pals, huh?” 

Loki’s head rolled along his shoulders, dropping to the side so that he could see Tony more easily. “We were never what I would call friends. But it would appear that even that relationship has soured of late.” 

“Oh yeah?” 

“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?” When Tony only blinked in response, Loki rolled his eyes. “Damn you, Stark. Fine. I told him you were off limits.” 

Tony straightened up a little, fingers curling just a bit against Loki’s leg, but he said nothing and just waited for the explanation that Loki didn’t seem especially keen on giving. Not right away, at least, as he took to fidgeting as best he could with a broken hand and the opposite arm in a sling, and a still-floating bottle of beer drawing his attention forward.

“He’s been very annoyed with me ever since the lab incident, as you can appreciate. You’re a very convenient power source.” Loki began to chew at his bottom lip. “He began talking about finding you again. Using you. I told him that would not be happening. He . . .” Loki tipped his head to look down at his injured torso. “Did not take that well.” 

“That’s almost kind of sweet. I’m sure the rest of the team will be thrilled.” 

Loki looked back up then, eyebrows lifted just enough to reveal more of his irises and how vivid green they really were. Tony wished he would do that more often instead of hiding them under his brow in a stern glower. 

“Oh, your teammates are still entirely open to attack. I only staked my claim on you.” 

When he leaned in, those green irises suddenly took on a more intense, more menacing aspect, an effect only enhanced by the sudden flash of sharp white teeth as Loki grinned. 

“You are mine, Tony Stark. Make no mistake about that. And I’ve ever been the jealous sort.” 

“Are you . . .” Tony trailed off. Swallowed. Tried again. “Are you asking me to go steady or something? Because there are a lot less creepy ways to do that. Also, we haven’t even been on a date yet.” 

“Is this not a date?” Loki nodded his head out toward the view over the ocean. “We’re sitting together at sunset, sharing a drink and a conversation. One of us at least is already half-nude. The other is being very liberal with his affection,” he added, gaze flicking down to Tony’s hand on his thigh. “I’m not sure how your courtship rituals play out here, but where I’m from, this is a date.” 

Tony opened his mouth to launch into an urgent denial, then shut it when, nope, Loki was right, or at least closer to the truth than Tony wanted to admit. And when he failed to come up with a viable rebuttal, Loki smirked and leaned in to kiss him. 

Smug asshole.


	3. Shattered

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you going to kill me?”
> 
> Loki took a distressingly long time to answer, and even then he did so in the form of a crushing kiss, holding on until Tony felt like he was drowning again.
> 
> _No one lives forever, Stark. Not even gods._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, that was a bit of a tonal shift there. Sorry. I think.
> 
> Also, uh, I've pointed out that this isn't far removed from Avengers era Loki and that he/she is really not the most stable being around, right? Just getting that out in the open here.

So. A date. 

Well, Tony figured he might as well make the most of it, which was the _only_ reason he could find to justify why he’d stuck a couple frozen pizzas in the dual ovens in the fancy-ass kitchen he never really used and then brought them back out onto the deck, along with an assortment of chips, dips, and better-than-Corona alcohol options. 

Asgardians were fast healers, it seemed, as Loki’s hand had repaired itself (no doubt sped along by his magic) well enough to at least let him grasp handful of pretzels or a slice of pizza. He liked mushrooms and sausage, Tony found, and he tried not to grin when he caught Loki very carefully picking the black olives from every slice and pushing them to the side on his paper plate as if a stern parent might chide him for not eating all of his food. 

The arm was still immobilized, and the chest and abdomen wounds were presumably still there, though now they were hidden behind the gauze Tony had wound in protective layers around Loki’s midsection. The leathers remained piled at his side, so even wrapped in gauze, Tony at least had to admit that Loki was still excellent eye candy. 

“So,” he started, trying not to get too distracted by watching Loki suck the pizza sauce off the tip of a finger in a way that _did things_ to Tony, things he really didn’t want to acknowledge right then. “Something’s been bothering me for a while, and while you’re here and kind of a captive audience, I need to ask you about it.” 

Loki made a humming noise around his finger, and damn him. _Damn him._ He knew _exactly_ what he was doing, judging from the way his eyes went half-lidded when he caught Tony watching him; Tony’s suspicions were confirmed when Loki very slowly withdrew his finger from his mouth and licked at the tip with far more finesse and care than any normal person would. 

Tony swallowed hard and looked down at own paper plate covered with pizza crusts and, he noticed just then, far more olives than had just been there the last time he’d looked. 

“Why did you help me out? In Doom’s lab, I mean. You could’ve been rid of me. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” 

That seemed to have hit a nerve. Loki’s hand dropped away from his mouth, the teasing evidently having lost its appeal. His sharp chin jutted away and out toward the end of the deck, ancient eyes cast out to sea as if only to take in the early dusk and the shimmering ocean. The tide was coming in, crashing noisily into shore, the waves scattering the silver moonlight in broken rays across the surface of the water. 

“All along Asgard’s borders, the oceans empty out over the edge of the world and fall away into nothing, it seems,” Loki pointed out, ever the king of nonsequitors. “The oceans turn into _vast_ waterfalls of tremendous energy, far larger and stronger than any I’ve seen on this or any other planet. I used to watch the falls when I was a child. I’d sit for hours and tell myself I’d follow them down someday, just to see where they ended.” 

“Probably with you broken into several pieces on a pile of rocks, like most waterfalls.” 

Loki hummed again. “Perhaps. But you never fully, _truly_ understand something until you experience it for yourself, do you? You can’t trust your eyes alone. They’re easily fooled. And you certainly can’t trust someone else’s words and knowledge they pass down to you, not entirely. People lie.” 

Tony snorted and reached for a burnt piece of onion that had fallen onto Loki’s plate. “That’s rich coming from you,” he laughed, popping the onion into his mouth. 

“I’ve never claimed to be anything more than a liar, Stark. You’ll have difficulty shaming me for that.” 

And that . . . was distressingly _honest_ , ironically enough, so Tony kept quiet and continued to chew, hoping against all evidence to the contrary that Loki’s tangent was actually going somewhere. 

After several long moments spent watching the moonlight skitter across the waves, Loki closed his eyes, giving Tony the opportunity to really study him without fear of being caught. He was old. Unfathomably old for a living thing, even if he was barely out of adolescence by the standards of his own species, a fact that never failed to make Tony feel inordinately uncomfortable. He _looked_ old much of the time—not in the sense that he was wrinkled and gray, but he carried a weight about him, a heavy-heartedness that slowed him, like the heaviness of his spirit was dragging the rest of him down. 

But when he relaxed, _really_ relaxed like this, when he let the tension seep from his face, when his shoulders crawled down from where they tended to stay bunched around his neck, when his jaw lost its normal stubborn rigidity, he seemed so impossibly young—young enough for Tony to _believe_ he was just another twenty-something with an odd fashion sense. The deep lines around his eyes and mouth softened and melted away. That vein in his neck and the one on his forehead weren’t bulging and threatening to burst as he ranted and spewed increasingly violent threats at anyone who wronged him. 

Even when he showed up as a woman, his harsher features rounded off into supple curves, the sharpness remained. A fantastic pair of breasts couldn’t counteract those cheekbones, chiseled and sharp as any of her daggers. 

And Loki was somehow even colder then, usually. She was flirtatious, but her eyes were hard and calculating, even more so than when they were half-obscured under the more prominent brow of her male form. Her voice, though still deep for a woman, was a higher pitch than was standard for Loki; it was lighter, but _she_ was not. Her skin was softer, but _she_ was not. 

Loki as he appeared in these moments, bloodied and weary and in need of a few hours’ rest, was dangerous. 

Loki as she appeared in Tony’s lab or elsewhere, lips pursed and legs parted on his workbench as she beckoned him to have her, was _deadly_. 

Loki himself was a wild animal, equally as likely to disengage from a fight as he was to rip an opponent’s throat out with his bare teeth. But Loki when she was in the mindset to show up as a woman? _That_ was when Tony worried. _She_ was the exotic but cursed relic that burned men alive as soon as they touched her. _She_ was the siren luring men to their enthusiastic demise and laughing as they thanked her with their dying breaths. _She_ was the beautiful flower, the prize of the garden, that poisoned everything and everyone around it, withering everything away until she stood alone, tall and proud of what she had done and never regretting or apologizing for her nature. 

Like this now, with Loki—still male, even while he was still bloody and bearing the marks of a vicious fight—Tony had a hard time believing they were one and the same. This Loki, _this_ Loki, the one Tony was coming dangerously close to thinking of as _his_ , in those quiet moments between rage and terror and insanity, _this_ was what Tony chose to believe was Loki at his core: introspective, fiercely intelligent, and capable of a certain type of kindness and gentleness that was all the more precious for its rarity. It was the part of him that hadn’t yet been chiseled away by centuries of resentment and scorn, both what was aimed at him and what he directed outwards at everyone else. The part that Loki hadn’t allowed his own madness to fully destroy. The part Thanos, for all his torture (and one day Tony might ask about _that_ too, if he felt brave or cruel enough) and all his mind control, hadn’t been able to tear asunder like the rest of Loki’s tattered mind. It was the part that burned hot and bright in his chest, a jealously guarded flame surrounded by ice and darkness. 

This was the reason Tony indulged the glorified tantrums, the chaos, the destruction, the sheer _glee_ Loki expressed every time he threw the Avengers’ lives into turmoil. This was how Tony knew (and it made him _sick_ to know) Loki could kill by day and take him to bed at night, and Tony would whisper sacrilegious prayers against the side of a would-be god’s neck, baptized in sweat and come and blood that might have been his, might have been Loki’s, might have been a victim’s, might have been a figment of his imagination. 

This: this peaceful moment of calm in the personified storm that called itself a god. This was what Tony craved: the eye of the hurricane, the pause between the first dark clouds on the horizon and the onslaught of the storm itself. He craved it, _knew_ it in the weight of Loki’s body against his, the murmured words against his lips, the barely-there touches, _all_ of it. Even when the storm inevitably hit, even when it left Tony broken and picking up the pieces in the aftermath, he couldn’t find it in him to regret standing there under the gathering storm clouds with his arms spread wide and lightning rods in his hands because he knew that only he could ever hope to tame any part of that storm. 

“What are you thinking about?” 

Tony blinked, drawn back into the present. Loki’s eyes were still closed, but Tony still got the distinct impression he was being watched, so much so that he ducked his head and pretended to take a sudden interest in the nearby bag of Doritos. 

“I thought you were asleep. I was about to go look for a marker so I could draw a bunch of dicks on your face.” 

“You stopped talking. That rarely happens.” One green eye slatted open, and that was enough to make Tony’s heart jump. The corner of Loki’s mouth lifted into a lazy grin. “It means you’re thinking.” 

Still fidgeting, Tony scratched at his goatee. Tellingly, he did _not_ drag his eyes up to meet Loki’s. 

“Just wondering where you were going with that waterfall story and if it had anything at all to do with the question I actually asked.” 

Heaving another quiet sigh, this one a little more impatient than the last, Loki dropped his hand to rest atop Tony’s, not so much lacing their fingers in an active gesture but just letting his fingers splay and make room for Tony to fill in the gaps. Appropriate, Tony thought. 

“Not everything has to be literal, you know.” 

“So there are no giant waterfalls in Asgard?” 

“Oh, no, there are.” 

Tony’s brow creased, and he had half a mind to squeeze Loki’s hand just enough to irritate the still-healing bones and make Loki yelp, just for the hassle of trying to piece out his riddles. 

“Cut the crap, Loki. I haven’t said a word to the rest of the team about you showing up all the time. Or about . . . us. Whatever this is between us. I helped you patch yourself up. Hell, now I’ve even cooked for you. I asked you a simple, straightforward question. The least you can do is give me a simple, straightforward answer.” 

Loki, eyes closed again, went silent and still for so long Tony began to suspect he really had fallen asleep. Seconds ticked by into a minute, then two, and Tony decided with a huff that he was going to gather up the remains of their dinner, toss it into the trash, maybe try to fit Loki in the trash as well while he was at it, _where he belonged,_ and wash his hands of the entire mess.

That was the plan, anyway, right up until Loki derailed it with a few softly spoken words and the press of a thumb into Tony’s palm. 

“Because I didn’t want you to die.” 

Such a simple, non-sociopathic comment shouldn’t have made Tony’s breath quicken; it said a lot about his dating preferences that it _did_ , so much so that he leaned into Loki’s space. 

“Come again?” 

Loki’s eyes opened again, a wash of brilliant green in an otherwise deathly pale canvas. “I want to take you apart myself. To learn your mind. Your heart. That device in your chest. Your spirit. I want all of it, and I want to know how it all works. And I want to know . . .” He paused, nose wrinkling a bit, eyes flicking slightly from one side to the other as if scanning an invisible page for exactly the right words. “I want to know what you saw in the abyss.” 

Sand. It always came back to that, didn’t it? The vast, empty, _dead_ expanse of the desert was too much like the same vast, empty, dead expanse of space, and that damned sand was in his throat again, in his eyes and nose and scraping like shards of glass inside him. 

He didn’t realize he was shaking until he felt Loki’s hand settle more heavily atop his, and when he looked up, Loki was watching him intently as a wolf might stalk its prey after it had been wounded and fled, its last life’s blood leaving a trail for its hunter to follow at its leisure while the prey could do nothing but cower and wait and hope the end would be quick. 

“Time went by so slowly there,” Loki began, voice even and oddly flat, as though he were merely reading from a book rather than pulling the horrors from his own memories. “You’ll be there but for a handful of moments, and yet you’ll swear you’ve spent entire lifetimes amid the stars and chaos of the nothing. I spent centuries there. Longer, even. Thousands and thousands of years, ripped apart and bled and burned and drowned and made to drink the blood from my own crippled body. I bought my freedom with a promise to put your insignificant little rock under my heel.” 

His hand tightened suddenly, almost too much, and his lips curled back into a snarl. 

“All for naught, all for ruin, by a band of mercenaries and a little man in a tin suit. That vexed me, Stark. It still does at night, when I can’t sleep for memories of those creatures’ hands on me, pulling me apart, splitting my mind open again and again until they had what they wanted, until I would have said or done anything just for the mercy of dying and _not_ being resurrected again. That you saw them and _escaped_ . . . ” 

He turned slightly, eyes by then taking on the fervent glow of a religious zealot, desperately searching Tony’s face for something he clearly hoped to find there. 

“You saw it, though. You fell. You looked into the void. Of all the creatures in all the realms, it was _you_ who best understood what I had seen.” 

Tony shook his head, forcing words past the brittle shards in his throat. “No, I just—I passed out pretty quickly. I don’t really remember seeing—” 

“You saw,” Loki repeated, more urgently this time. “We both know what you saw, Tony. You saw him. You saw his legions, just a fraction of them, and you understood finally how this was always going to end.” 

Eyes squeezed shut. Sand in his throat, nothing but the empty blackness of space, the blackness of a freezing cave. His lungs filling with water as his head was shoved below the surface. The screams of the dying Chitauri in his head even in the silent void of space, slicing through his brain like it was tissue paper and embedding there, haunting him every time he closed his eyes or had a few seconds of silence. The _clang-clang-clang_ of the hammer against metal in that same freezing cave. An inhumanly strong hand around his throat, crushing it, cutting off his hair and shifting the bones out of place while he was lifted off his feet like a child’s doll. A shower of glass around him and the terrifying thrill of freefall. Obi, his godfather, his surrogate father, staring into his eyes, all but literally pulling Tony’s heart from his chest and leaving him to die, broken and betrayed and— 

“Calm,” Loki urged, pulling his hand from atop Tony’s to rest against the side of his face instead, thumb healed enough to brush against Tony’s cheek. “I hated you before, truly. Your insolence, your unwillingness to bend to me, your infuriating, _endless_ commentary. But you saw. You know.” 

Tony bit his lip until he tasted blood, but he didn’t even know he had done so until he felt Loki’s lips against his and saw his own blood on the mage’s mouth. It seemed . . . fitting, somehow. Like it was always meant to be there. 

“I will take you apart myself, Tony Stark. I will pull you apart, strip you down to your soul until I understand you. But that is _my_ honor. Not Victor’s. Not anyone else’s. I will rip apart atom by atom anyone who attempts to harm you. We are kindred now, united by the horrors of seeing things we were never meant to see. I would like to keep you, that I might understand.” 

_Why you kept your sanity while mine failed_. Tony was good at filling in the blanks between what people said and what they meant, a talent that, it seemed, extended even to ancient space royalty. 

Sand. Sand again, grinding like broken glass in his throat, but Tony forced the words out anyway. 

“Are you going to kill me?” 

Loki took a distressingly long time to answer, and even then he did so in the form of a crushing kiss, holding on until Tony felt like he was drowning again. 

_No one lives forever, Stark. Not even gods._

The voice felt . . . felt _wrong_ , curling through Tony’s mind like oil, snaking through every crevice and infecting everything in its path. Loki was _in_ there, rearranging things as he saw fit, poking around for something, anything he could use. It was violating, and Tony, who could never leave well enough alone, chased after it, desperate to see where it went, even when he _knew_ that path likely ended in ruin. Loki was poison. Tony had been wrong—in _any_ form, Loki was poison, and Tony . . . Tony liked the taste of it on his tongue. 

He knew better. He absolutely knew better, but it didn’t stop him from slinging a leg over Loki’s hips and straddling him, grinding hard against him while one hand shoved its way through the tangled mess of black curls, pulling Loki’s head back until his neck went taut. 

“It’s a simple question, you son of a bitch,” he growled, free hand deliberately pressing a thumb into one of the worst wounds he remembered seeing in Loki’s torso, the one where he’d nearly puked upon seeing a white flash of bone peeking out from behind torn muscle and dark blood. “Stop with the goddamn riddles. Is that your game plan? Are you going to try to kill me?” 

Loki hissed and writhed against Tony’s thumb as if he were actually trapped, and Tony _might_ have relented, except that he knew Loki had more than enough strength to stop this—and that he was leaning _into_ the touch, not away from it. 

Poison. All the way through. 

Eyes bright and sparking with a millennium’s worth of chaos, Loki smiled—unhinged, clearly enjoying Tony pushing back in such a way. 

“Someday, perhaps. After I’ve gotten what I want from you. But until then, Tony Stark, you are safe with me. Whoever tries to harm you, I will rip them from atom to atom until they beg for my mercy and find I have none to spare. Not for those who would take what’s mine.” 

He gasped when Tony’s thumb pressed in harder against the wound. 

“I’m not yours.” 

“Aren’t you?” Loki shot back, and when he grinned Tony could see _his_ blood still on Loki’s lips. “I’ve just told you we’re heading straight to ruin, both of us, and you’re . . . well. You’re clearly fine with this development.” 

For once, Tony’s infamously ceaseless mouth failed him. Irritated, mostly because Loki was right, the bastard, Tony leaned in and bit down hard at Loki’s neck, far harder than he would ever dare with anyone else. Loki moaned and arched up against Tony, rewarded with another press of Tony’s thumb into the wound, and that was— 

Tony had a lot of self-destructive tendencies that were going to get him killed, but perhaps none so much as his newfound love of antagonizing a deranged alien-god-thing. He couldn’t regret it, though, couldn’t regret calling the storm down on himself and cursing the heavens for only being themselves and giving him what he said he wanted. 

He was choking, head held underwater again, sand in his throat, in his eyes, in every cell in his body, and when Loki kissed him again it felt like burning. It was not, though, enough to stop him from biting hard enough at Loki’s neck until he drew blood; it tasted sweet on his tongue, not at all like the bitterness of his own shame. It tasted like stardust and old secrets left buried in timeless archives on the far side of the galaxy, and if Loki wanted to know more about him, wanted to learn what he was and how he operated, he was going to need to try harder. 

None of that stopped Tony from continuing to grind against Loki as their remaining clothes were magicked away, or from grunting against Loki’s neck when he rose up onto his knees to let magic-slicked fingers work him open. Not far enough, it turned out, and he groaned as he sank back down, stretching and aching and still somehow longing for _more_ , whatever that _more_ was. 

The shame thick in his mouth, the traitorous smoke still clouding his thoughts because Loki was _still in there_ , Tony refused to cede ground, moving quickly enough he knew his knees were going to hurt like hell later from scraping the wooden decking. He didn’t _care_ that he was bumping too hard against the arm in the sling, and he meant to keep prodding at the wounds on Loki’s torso, constantly seeking that sweet spot where one more fraction of an inch would send Loki crashing headlong into a blinding rage. 

Tony threw his head back to howl in terror-pain-ecstasy- _everything_ when Loki’s hand moved over the reactor, not stealing his power this time but instead force-feeding his own magic back into a human body never designed to even know this sort of energy, much less contain it. With no outlet, with no arcane gifts of his own, Tony was left to sit with it, let it burn its way through his blood until felt as though he might boil alive from the inside. 

“Fu—uuuuck, stop,” he pleaded, once again begging a god— _his_ god, that traitorous voice in his head whispered, and this time he wasn’t sure if it was Loki or really his own embattled conscience. Whichever it was, Loki heard him and showed some measure of benevolence, even if just for his own amusement. The energy subsided, just enough for Tony to breathe again. 

Then it came back, stronger this time, and Loki grinned viciously up at Tony as he forced the energy back in twice as hard. Tony gasped, suddenly rock hard and desperate and _aching_ and absolutely certain his heart was going to give out. 

_Breathe into it, Tony. Let it happen. You can have this. Let me give you this._  

When Tony came back to himself a few seconds later, spent and slumped against Loki, he realized he still had the taste of Loki’s blood on his lips. He still had his thumbs pressed into the same wounds he had so carefully helped bandage earlier, intent as he was on causing whatever kind of pain he could manage and only spurred on by the fact Loki had _liked_ that. 

He was aware also of every nerve in his body singing and vibrating with an odd frequency that seemed out of step with the natural laws of the world. 

Loki’s solid presence was all that kept him anchored in place. Too bad that same presence had just all but promised to kill him. Appropriate. But right at that moment, when the secrets of the universe seemed _just_ out of his grasp, Tony didn’t mind so much. 

He dropped his head to watch as Loki continued to milk him for everything he had, evidently having already finished himself. As lovely a sight as it was, he was very quickly distracted by the green, sputtering sparks flickering out of the reactor. 

“Loki, what did you—” 

“I gave you a gift, Stark,” Loki answered, the fervor gone from his voice and eyes and replaced with that same gentleness Tony had seen earlier, that he thought he could come to . . . to appreciate. “I want to know you. It’s only fair if I let you know me as well.” 

“I feel like my guts are on fire.” 

Loki chuckled, low and deep and rumbling in his chest as he lifted his hand, still slick with Tony’s come. He smeared his fingers first over Tony’s lips, then his own, making sure Tony watched as he licked his fingers clean. 

“So now you know me. A fair trade, hmm?” 

“You—oh, _fuck_ you. You said you wanted to kill me.” 

Loki shook his head, though he stopped long enough to hold Tony’s gaze as he sucked the last of the fluid from his index finger and ran his tongue along his lips. As if Tony could have looked away from _that._  

“I said I _might_ kill you someday.” 

“After I’ve outlived my usefulness.” 

“Yes,” Loki agreed without hesitation. “But that’s very different from _wanting_ to kill you. Not a single one of us can outrun or outsmart what’s in our blood and what the norns have woven as our fates. I will always be a liar. And you . . .” He looked down, drawing Tony’s attention to where a couple of the wounds in his chest Tony had been purposefully irritating had reopened and begun to bleed through the gauze. “You, my darling, my _dauðrkaupi_ , have such a capacity for cruelty in you. I’ve seen it. It simmers just below your surface, driving you to build greater weapons and even turn yourself into one.” 

Tony’s arm ached again, an imagined pain from a real wound when he’d crashed in the desert, exhausted, panicking on adrenaline, and—he’d been brutal in his escape, and from the look Loki was giving him that moment a mixture of understanding and excitement and, perhaps, even passion—he realized Loki knew that somehow, because of course he did.   

Sand clawed its way into the soft tissue of his throat, shredding his vocal cords until he couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream, couldn’t even whisper a prayer for mercy, but he would not hang his head in shame. He wouldn’t give Loki the satisfaction. _Couldn’t_ give him that. One did not show weakness to a god, especially not one who alternated between looking at Tony as if he were the most important thing in the world and like he was wondering what Tony’s skeleton would look like when stripped bare of its flesh. 

“You hide it well,” Loki went on, pads of his fingers skating over Tony’s mouth before curving out to follow the line of his cheek. “But like seeks like. I know you, Tony Stark. I should like to know more, but I know enough now to understand _what_ you are, if not why. So do take care to remember your own nature before you attempt to judge me for mine, won’t you?” 

Having nothing else to say to that, at least nothing that wouldn’t invite another unwanted lecture, Tony pushed himself up and off Loki’s lap, wincing at the quiet wet noises that resulted as their bodies peeled away from each other. He’d worry about cleanup later. That very moment, physically and mentally drained and still worried about what it was that Loki had done to the reactor, he collapsed at Loki’s side again, each leaning heavily against the other as though their combined efforts could fight back the weight of the world threatening to crush them individually. 

Tony wasn’t sure how his hand ended up back in Loki’s or how their fingers got entangled again, wasn’t even aware it had happened at all until he noticed a thumb stroking mindlessly over his knuckles. 

“I wanted to test my nature,” Loki offered abruptly, no context or anything, leaving Tony able to do little else but blink stupidly at him. “I _am_ a liar, and a cheat, and a murderer, and everything else you’ve heard and called me yourself. I wanted to know if I was more.” 

Yeah, that was somehow even more cryptic than the first couple answers, and Tony ended up rubbing his forehead and squeezing his eyes closed for a moment. “Okay,” he tried again, careful to keep his voice as even as possible. “And the waterfall story . . .? What’s the connection? What’s with the tangent?” 

Loki laughed, but not the shrill one laced with madness that he used so often around others, Tony had noticed. No, this one was _his_ , rich and low and as truthful as anything ever was as far as Loki was concerned. 

“I’m the god of chaos, Stark, in case you’ve forgotten. Do I need a reason?” 

“Bullshit,” Tony shot back barely before Loki had even stopped talking. “You _act_ chaotically, sure. But you never, _never_ , say a damn word without thinking about it first.” 

“Observant, little _gapr_.” 

“See? Like that. You wouldn’t use words I don’t understand unless you _wanted_ me to not understand them.” 

“Or,” Loki countered, squeezing his fingers around Tony’s, “perhaps there’s no direct translation for what I mean, and the All-Tongue simply can’t accommodate.” 

“Or you’re full of shit and just like making me feel like an idiot.” 

That, surprisingly, got another one of those open laughs out of Loki, disarmingly warm given the source; Tony leaned into him even more. 

“Or perhaps that, yes.” After a few seconds, the memory of that rich laughter hanging between them like an echo of a past life, Loki spoke again, this time with his eyes turned out toward the ocean but slightly unfocused, like he meant to pull that memory from thin air and make it manifest in the present. And for all Tony understood of his abilities, maybe he really _could_ do that. 

“I was obsessed by it. I was much like you in my youth. I wanted to know everything about everything. I was driven by the need to learn how everything worked—how plants grew, how languages developed, how gears turned machinery, how planets formed, how the universe had started, all of it. But these falls . . . they made no sense. The water spilled off the edge of the world—and it _is_ an edge. I know that makes no sense with the physics of your realm as you understand them, but in Asgard, it was just accepted. The water disappears down over the edge and then . . . disappears. Some believe it begins to travel _upward_ at some point to form the frozen peaks beneath Asgard. Some believe it just boils off into space. 

“But neither explanation made sense to me at all, so I set about trying to solve the riddle for myself. I studied. I spent years in the grand archives in Asgard and in the vast, ancient libraries of Vanaheim. I asked elders and witches, including my own mother, and none of them could answer a very simple question: what was _really_ at the end of those falls? They knew only what had been passed down through legend and what others had written. But they didn’t _know_ , Tony. They trusted what others had told them and believed it.” 

The hand around Tony’s squeezed again, an apparently reflexive gesture, given that Loki still never took his eyes off the waves, which had settled by then with the outgoing tide. 

“I walked to the edge of one of the falls every day for longer than I know. I took maps and drew my own. I collected some of the water in a bowl and attempted to call the norns to me to tell me their secrets. They had rather more important business than indulging a child’s curiosity, as you can imagine. But I needed to know. I couldn’t trust what I saw with my own eyes, not when what my eyes told me looked like a lie.” 

Tony was going to regret this, he knew, but—“So what did you do? I know you didn’t just let it be, so how did you sort it out for yourself?” 

Loki at last dragged his gaze from the ocean and turned it back toward Tony, eyes bright and promising disaster and salvation at once. 

“I needed to know, and I would only ever know by experiencing it for myself. So I leaped."  
  
“Into a waterfall.” 

“Yes.”

“That went off the edge of your world.”

“Yes.” 

Tony, torn between calling Loki on another lie and continuing to draw breath, ultimately decided to play along. “And what did you find out?” 

Loki shook his head and leaned in, once again looking as young and unburdened as he had earlier, when those dangerous thoughts of keeping him had wormed their way into Tony’s mind. “No, Tony. You need to make that leap for yourself to get your own answers.” 

“Why do you answer every question with, like, three more riddles?” 

“You asked me why I saved you. I’ve told you.” 

“You’ve told me a lot of things lately, at least 89% of which is complete horseshit.” 

“Then believe this: I needed to know if I could challenge my nature. If I could, perhaps in some small measure, outpace the norns, even just for a moment, even if I could not deny them. I needed to know that if I couldn’t change my fate, I could change the path that leads me to it.” 

Tony swallowed hard. The imagined grains of sand were still there, along with an odd lump that had formed over the last few minutes. 

“And?” 

Loki smiled. “And you’re here and not still powering Victor’s experiments. Draw your own conclusions.” 

Without warning, he disappeared for a second behind a shimmering wall of golden light, and when it cleared, he was on his feet, fully dressed in what Tony could only describe as “Asgardian casual” of a tunic and sinfully tight leather trousers. The armor and leathers heaped to the side were gone, however, so Tony suspected Loki was actually wearing those but had glamoured himself into something simpler for reasons Tony didn’t care to get into. 

“Taking off already?” 

“I’m only here because you have kindly offered your home as a haven. Which I do appreciate, by the way. I needed time for my injuries to heal. I got what I came for.” Then, with a smirk, he glanced down at Tony’s still-nude body, and Tony could _swear_ that Loki was outright eye-fucking him all over again. “And more. I should be going now, before Victor decides to search me out after all.” 

“I thought you said he wouldn’t—” 

“Remember who I am, Stark,” Loki warned in a near sing-song voice. “And trust your instincts.” 

“They’re currently telling me I should find a way to put up some kind of wards that short-circuit your magic or just fry you like a bug zapper every time you try to teleport in here.” 

Another one of those laughs that made Tony’s hair stand on end and his nerves tingle in the best possible way. “And I’ll remember who _you_ are as well. Goodnight, Tony.” 

Without waiting for a goodbye, without so much as a flourish, Loki merely blinked out of sight—as did the rest of the second pizza. 

Tony shifted and groaned when he realized what a terrible idea it would be to move. His knees were skinned and probably full of splinters. His thighs burned. He was half-convinced his internal organs had been rearranged. His chest ached—and if he were the sentimental type, he might think it wasn’t _completely_ due to the magic fuckery Loki had pulled. 

Tony lazily gathered some of the remaining first aid supplies to tend to his ruined knees, then dropped back against the sliding glass door leading into the kitchen. When he closed his eyes, he could still see energy arcing behind his eyelids, flaring blue-white and green and gold. 

He didn’t recall falling asleep, but when he did, he dreamed of trying to outrun a storm and finding sanctuary only at the edge of a steep cliff that dropped into nothing, and when he jumped, he did so while holding a child god’s hand and with laughter echoing in his head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _dauðrkaupi_ is a potentially made-up byname that literally means "death merchant." For obvious reasons. 
> 
> _gapr_ is a Norse byname commonly translated as both "chatterbox" and "mockingbird."


End file.
